


Harry's Girl

by RedHorse



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: AU - Harry has a friend, F/F, F/M, Gen, M/M, Slow Updates, a tough loyal friend, and a Muggle, and a poc, incomplete and abandoned, so if that's not your thing you've been forewarned, this is the happiest thing I've ever written, who's also a maths prodigy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-05
Updated: 2019-05-15
Packaged: 2019-06-05 21:52:52
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15180164
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/RedHorse/pseuds/RedHorse
Summary: When Harry's Hogwarts letter arrived, he only had one question."Can Eva come too?"The tall Scottish woman in the strange hat frowned. "Who?"





	1. The Wrong Boy

**Author's Note:**

> So this obviously will not be for everyone. But I wrote a few pages of it and when I reread it I smiled. So...take it or leave it, no hard feelings.

Though she would never know it, Constance Durillo had a profound effect upon the fate of the Wizarding World when she rendered her decision to leave her useless husband, Michael Durillo, to the arms of whatever younger woman he had been sniffing after this time. She packed all of her most essential belongings (which weren’t many, to be honest) into the Mercedes Benz he’d bought her the Christmas before, when he promised there would be no more women.

She did so with a minimum of tears, for the sake of her daughter Evangeline, who watched Constance the entire time with wide, questioning eyes.

“We’re just going on a little trip,” Constance assured her. “A little trip to grandma’s house.”

Evangeline brightened. She enjoyed her grandma’s house, largely because they only visited for holidays and other special occasions associated with presents. Though it was a long car ride, Evangeline was a relatively patient five-year-old girl, and something about the rocking motion of a vehicle tended to set her to sleep. The journey thus passed quick and dreamlike, and she generally awoke to find herself being hugged by the strongly perfumed arms of her grandmother, and ushered inside for milk and biscuits.

So Evangeline obediently packed up her favorite toys into a pink and silver backpack decorated with unicorns, and watched her mother empty her dresser drawers into a big suitcase. In the doorway, Constance Durillo paused, her daughter’s hand in hers, and stared out upon the street.

She almost went back inside, unpacked everything, and dismissed the impulse to go as a lark. Constance was not a bold woman, and she had never relished change. She had a comfortable life, a healthy daughter she adored, and a big house that her husband paid for. Most people in her situation would stay put.

But Constance didn’t. Instead, six hours later her daughter Evangeline stepped onto the kerb of Privet Drive outside her grandmother’s house in Little Whinging, and saw a boy with hair just as dark as hers, but bright green eyes instead, kneeling in a muddy flower bed and pulling up weeds.

Evangeline loved to play outside, but had never taken any interest in gardening. Her grandmother and her mother had started hugging several seconds before and hadn’t stopped, so while they were distracted Evangeline wandered across the dividing line between her grandmother’s lawn and the neighboring property, and stood watching the boy with a frown.

“Are you allowed to play in the flowerbed?” she wanted to know. The boy jerked as though she had thrown something at him, then snapped his head around to look at her. No one had ever looked at Evangeline like that – as though she were a dog off its leash and ready to attack. It made her take a step backward and the boy, reassured by her retreat, reached up with a muddy hand and pushed his glasses up on his nose, loosening the already wobbly juncture of the broken nose piece, held together with grubby tape. In the process he left a great smudge of dirt on his cheek.

“I’m not playing,” he said, in a very quiet voice.

“Oh,” Evangeline said, not understanding at all. As far as Evangeline could tell, children her age either slept, ate, played, or went along on errands, which could be sort of like playing if the parent you were with was not too tired. When you were older, another thing you could do was go to school, and do homework, and then when you were grown up you could also work. Evangeline wasn’t sure what working was, but thought based upon her father’s example, it was like going to school except with nicer clothes, and often involved staying out late.

“I’m not allowed to play in the mud unless I’m wearing old clothes,” Evangeline said, for the sake of conversation. Even at five, she was aware she wasn’t being well-received.

The boy frowned. “I told you, I’m not playing,” he insisted.

“Evangeline,” called Constance. “Come say hello to grandma.”

Evangeline waved at her mother over her shoulder, and then looked back at the boy determinedly. “That’s my name,” she explained. “Evangeline. What’s yours?”

“Harry,” he said, in a strained voice like he didn’t want to say. Evangeline smiled her best smile, the one people usually couldn’t help but return, and felt a rush of delight when the boy smiled back – very slightly, and very cautiously, but a smile still.

“Bye, Harry,” she said, and turned and ran back to her mother. Because she hadn’t been expecting them, Evangeline’s grandmother didn’t have any biscuits. But she settled Evangeline at the round table by the kitchen window with milk and jam on bread, and Evangeline looked out the window and found she could see Harry where she’d left him, kneeling in the garden.

“What’s that boy doing, mom?” The adults had fallen into a charged silence, though Evangeline hadn’t really noticed. Her mother looked up from her hands, then out the window, clearly not sure what to say.

“He’s doing his chores, I think, my darling,” said Evangeline’s grandmother. “Has lots of chores, that one,” she added, like she wasn’t sure about something. But Evangeline’s grandmother was very forgetful, as Constance always gently reminded Evangeline, so she never could manage to dwell on the little boy next door for long.

“What’s chores?” Evangeline asked. If they involved getting into the mud with more frequency, she found she was rather interested.

“Don’t you worry about any of that,” her grandmother assured her. “Now, I think I may have some sweets in the pantry…”

Even a strange boy playing in the mud couldn’t distract Evangeline from the prospect of sweets. She was only five, after all.

****

The next day, Evangeline found the boy named Harry again, doing chores and not seeming to enjoy them very much. This time Evangeline approached him from the side, the way she’d learned to seek out dogs and horses, so as not to startle him. He still tensed at the sight of her and leaned away.

“Do you want to play with me?”

Evangeline was born to draw people into her orbit, though she would never understand why. She was already a beautiful child at five, without the awkward front teeth or clumsy limbs of so many girls her age. But even if she were plain, she had a steady attention and an easy smile that communicated a sincere interest in the people around her that they couldn’t help responding to.

Harry’s reaction to her was no different, though he had been conditioned so long to expect no real kindness, that anything resembling it made him search for the trap to its lure. Evangeline was so pretty and nice he might have thought she’d walked out of his imagination, but he knew his mind didn’t have the material to conjure anything quite like her.

“If you do, I’ll ask my mom, and she’ll ask your mom,” Evangeline explained. “Do you like maths?”

Harry blinked. All he knew about maths was that you had to count before you could learn them, and Uncle Vernon thought Dudley would be brilliant because he could count to five. Harry could count to one thousand one hundred and then he became confused. This was one of the ways he passed time in his cupboard.

”I’m not allowed to play with you,” Harry said, because he didn’t have to ask to know it was true. He also felt the startled hope that stirred in his heart when Evangeline spoke to him and asked him about maths and knew it should be squashed. It had never been right before.

Evangeline went very stiff with disbelief. Rejection, foreign to her now and forever, broke over her like a wave and made her cry. “If you didn’t want to play, you could have said so.”

She fled back to 5 Privet Drive to find her mother.

****

A few days later, Petunia Dursley showed up on her neighbor’s doorstep with Dudley in tow. A moving van had delivered furniture and belongings attributable to old Miss Havershell’s daughter and granddaughter, and the neighborhood thus ascertained they were there to stay. Everyone knew the Havershells had money and the girls had married money, too. And the girl was just Dudley’s age.

When Constance opened the door, Petunia arranged her face into the broad smile she had practiced for years in the mirror; the one that didn’t accentuate her long face. Petunia’s effort was made more difficult by the fact that Constance was a lovely woman, and her casual attire at home on a Thursday afternoon included a silk blouse Petunia had admired in the display window at the boutique downtown for months but couldn’t convince Vernon to buy.

”Hello,” said Constance, with a strained smile for Petunia that turned a little sweeter when she looked down at Dudley. He lifted a hand, without a doubt to pick his nose, and Petunia intercepted it just in time and held it tightly in her own.

”I’m Petunia Dursley, from next door, and this is my son, Dudley. We thought we’d welcome you to the neighborhood, and see if your daughter might want to play with Dudley.”

”Next door,” Constance echoed. Her eyes narrowed. “Then you’re the family that instructed your child not to play with my daughter,” she said, voice steely.

When Evangeline came to Constance and tearfully related Harry’s words, Constance had soothed her while inwardly constructing an explanation. The neighbors were the conservative sort who saw divorce as a sin at worst and a fall from social grace at best. That didn’t really explain why the woman had appeared with her son this afternoon, though.

”Not at all,” Petunia said, surprised. She in fact did disdain divorce, but these were modern times and if her social network had decided that Constance was a desirable connection anyway, she wasn’t going to let her principles stand in the way of advancement.

Constance wilted against the doorway quite prettily, Petunia thought darkly. “I’m sorry,” said the woman, sounding heartfelt. “I just assumed. How rude of me.” She smiled at Dudley. “Would you like to play with Evangeline while I visit with your mother?”

“Evangeline,” Petunia said, privately horrified. “What a beautiful name.” She had let Vernon name Dudley, after growing up as “Petunia” and promising her future children classic, sturdy names that no one would raise an eyebrow at. Dudley, at least, was a traditional name.

Constance smiled at Petunia. “I have coffee _and_ tea,” she told Petunia, as Dudley shuffled inside with an absence of enthusiasm neither adult could fail to note.

“Eva,” Constance called. There was the faint drum of rapid footfalls over their heads, then a girl with black hair, light blue eyes and deep gold skin came racing down the stairs. Petunia fought her two halves – one, that found the girl aesthetically lovely, and the other, that wondered what her father’s race must be – and hoped her face showed mere surprise as Evangeline arrived at the foot of the stairs and smiled politely at Petunia before directing an assessing look at Dudley. After studying him a moment, her lips pursed in a tiny frown.

Offended on Dudley’s behalf – he had _baby fat_ , was all it was, and that scowl that didn’t look much better on him than it did on his father, but that wasn’t a permanent fixture – Petunia drew her son a little closer to her side with a hand on his shoulder. Or at least, she attempted to, but the sight of the girl was having some sort of effect on Dudley, and he stepped away from Petunia and his frown was replaced by a smile that bordered upon friendly.

“I’m Dudley,” he said, and Petunia was quite sure it was the first time he’d bothered to tell anyone without prompting. “We live next door. You’re very pretty,” he added, and Petunia colored and reached out a quelling hand toward him.

Constance, still looking tired but now smiling rather indulgently at Dudley, glanced at Petunia in a way that said she forgave his lapse in manners. Evangeline, accustomed to compliments, was not impressed.

“Do you like maths?” she demanded.

“I can count to five,” Dudley said cautiously.

Evangeline’s brows rose and she looked up at her mother accusingly. “Is he being serious?”

“Evangeline,” her mother said in a low voice, and Evangeline, recalling previous lectures on manners and the average child’s disinterest in maths, bit her lip and looked at Dudley again with a furrowed brow. “I’m sorry. But I had to ask.” She sighed. “Will it be dolls, then, or Lego?”

Dudley had little interest in toys that weren’t video games, but he was bizarrely eager to please standing in the presence of this odd, pretty girl, so he chose Lego then added, with a shy diplomacy that left his mother’s mouth hanging open, “Or whatever you want to play with, Eva.” He called her Ev-ah, like her mother had, the same phonetics as the first two syllables of her name when spoken with a base American accent. But Evangeline stiffened and shook her head.

“Call me Evangeline,” was her firm instruction. When Dudley nodded, looking taken aback, she nodded too and turned to lead the way upstairs.

From her bedroom window, 4 Privet Drive was visible, including the uncurtained window that showed Dudley’s second bedroom, mostly filled with toys he had barely played with and a furniture set that was somewhat oversized for the space.

“That’s our house,” Dudley said, for something to say, while Evangeline tugged a plastic box of Lego from under her bed.

Evangeline looked up, shaking her hair back from her face. She saw the window Dudley was looking out of and scrambled to her feet. “So that boy that wouldn’t play with me is your brother?”

Dudley looked blank.

“The boy with black hair and green eyes,” Evangeline explained. People didn’t do chores in _other_ people’s gardens, did they? She almost vibrated with the energy of the mystery.

But then Dudley’s expression cleared. “Oh, _him_ ,” he sneered, in a very fair impression of his father that startled Evangeline so much she took several backward steps, and leaned against her bed. Oblivious, Dudley continued in the same tone. “ _He_ is my freaky cousin, not my brother.” He shuddered, as though to imply more had been insulting. And it had, rather. Dudley was very well-versed in how ashamed they all were of Harry.

Evangeline did not know what to say, or do, except that she had a strong inclination to shout for her mother, the way one did when one realized she was alone in the presence of someone dangerous. But then she remembered Dudley was a pudgy boy her age dim enough to be proud of counting to five, and she relaxed.

“I like him,” she declared, though she had told her mother through her tears the day she last spoke to Harry that she hated the boy in the muddy garden and hoped she never saw him again. Evangeline was born to be a contrarian. “And I don’t like you. And I don’t want to play with you.”

With that, she shepherded a bewildered and crestfallen Dudley back down the stairs and presented him to their mothers where they were stiffly taking tea and making small talk at the kitchen table.

“It’s time for Dudley to go home,” said Evangeline, and turned and ran back upstairs.

“She’s a solitary girl, at times,” Constance explained in a faint voice, trying to ignore the way Petunia was turning red in outrage. For his part, Dudley still seemed too startled by the abrupt turn of events to experience any offense. He craned his head back to look at his mother as she took him by the hand and towed him toward the door, even her heels on the floorboards seeming to make an angry noise.

“But we didn’t play Lego,” he said plaintively as they emerged onto the step.

“Good day, Constance,” Petunia said coldly over her shoulder. Their hostess was frowning in distraction, her mind already upstairs with her daughter. _What on Earth was all that about?_ she wondered, waving absently at the two Dursleys and closing the door.

Upstairs, she found Evangeline staring out her bedroom window with her hands closed tightly on the edge of the sill.

“What’s the matter, sweetheart?”

But Evangeline was stuck in one of those moments in early childhood where her perception and instinct outpaced what she was able to express, so she was unable to do anything but snuggle against her mother’s side and quietly cry.

“It was the wrong boy,” she murmured into the folds of her mother’s expensive blouse, but her voice was too muffled for Constance to hear.


	2. Truths

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is a side project written for my personal gratification alone and it is unedited! I hope you enjoy it anyway, and you're welcome to point out a glaring error if you find one and are so inclined.

After Evangeline and Constance had been living with grandmother Havershell for two weeks, and Evangeline had been watching Harry in the Dursleys’ garden surreptitiously from the windows during the same such time, she petitioned her grandmother for chores.

Mrs. Havershell was surprised. “You _want me_ to assign you some chores?”

Like Constance, Mrs. Havershell spoke with an American accent, southern in its origin, though less tempered than her daughter’s by their decade of living in Britain. Her days were quite solitary, with little to look forward to other than her daughter’s daily phone calls, up until the excitement of these past weeks. Mrs. Havershell had not thought she could tire of having Constance and Evangeline so near, but did feel a little overwhelmed at times at the loss of her peace and quiet. Though a fairly serious child for her age, Evangeline had a baffling energy that seemed to drain Mrs. Havershell’s more limited reserves by proximity.

Constance had been spending rather a lot of time in the north guest room. (Which Mrs. Havershell supposed was no longer a guest room, but rather Constance’s room.) As a result, Evangeline was more or less underfoot at all times, which was pleasant but taxing. It had not occurred to Mrs. Havershell to assign a child chores, but she recalled such responsibilities well from her own youth.

“You may sweep the kitchen floor, and if you do a good job, I’ll give you a dollar,” she said at last, smiling magnanimously down at Evangeline. Evangeline’s face was stricken.

Alarmed, Mrs. Havershell bent at the waist and brushed at the child’s cheeks, noting the dark golden skin gone sickly, as though shocked. “Whatever is the matter, my dear?”

“Chores are meant to be outdoors, and dirty,” Evangeline said slowly. “Sweeping the floor is _not_ fun.”

It might have occurred to Constance that the outcome of this exchange should be to insist Evangeline sweep the floor, but Mrs. Havershell had no such inclination.

“Of course,” she said hurriedly, relieved when Evangeline’s healthy complexion was restored. “I’ll show you how we pull a few weeds.”

Mrs. Havershell was not a gardener, and generally spent very little time outdoors. There was a service that came to carry out basic tasks, such as cutting the grass and preventing its encroach onto the walk or the curb, and kept a tidy seasonal flowerbed under the sitting room window. As a result of the simplicity of the landscaping and the sufficiency of the service, it was some time before Mrs. Havershell located a weed upon which to demonstrate Evangeline’s self-declared chore.

“Aha!” she said at last, finding a gangly bit of grass that qualified, close to the stretch of decorative iron fence that delineated the Dursleys’ property from Mrs. Havershell’s. She bent over, grimacing a bit when something protested in her lower back, seized the grass and tugged. Several leaves and half the stem came away, while the rest of the stalk and its roots remained firmly connected to the ground.

She glanced up at Evangeline, a bit shamefaced, but Evangeline was not paying attention. Evangeline was staring through the fence at the neighbors’ dark-haired boy, whom Mrs. Havershell recalled having some thoughts regarding once or twice, but couldn’t recall now what they had been. Mrs. Havershell was often confused, a fact of this stage of her life that she was trying to bear with grace.

“Grandma,” Evangeline said, still looking at the boy, “that boy has chores. See?”

Mrs. Havershell _did_ see. The boy, who couldn’t be as old as Evangeline or, if he was, was painfully slight and bony, was up to his elbows in mulch, which he was spreading around an impressive grouping of hydrangeas, dirt up to his armpits and all over his face.

It was a warm afternoon, and the child’s hair was damp with sweat. Mrs. Havershell frowned. “ _That_ is what you would like to do, sweetheart?” she asked Evangeline doubtfully. Evangeline nodded. Mrs. Havershell frowned more. She had no mulch, or hydrangeas, or surviving weeds.

“Perhaps it will be all right with Mrs. Dursley if you help Dudley with his chores,” ventured Mrs. Havershell. “I can go and ask her.”

“That’s not Dudley,” said Evangeline. “That’s Harry. Dudley doesn’t get to do any chores either.” She sounded indignant on Dudley’s behalf.

Mrs. Havershell couldn’t shake her frown, not as they circled back to the front of the house and down the stretch of sidewalk to the Dursleys’ front door. Not until her deeply ingrained manners forced her to smile at Petunia Dursley when she opened the door.

“Hello,” she said. “May Evangeline play in the garden with Dudley?”

“Harry,” Evangeline corrected.

“Harry,” said Mrs. Havershell.

Petunia seemed to have contracted Mrs. Havershell’s frown. For a moment, she did not know what to say. Then an apologetic, somewhat simpering smile came to her face. “I’m so sorry,” she said in a murmur, then glanced down at Evangeline and finished with her hand cupped around her mouth, as though she didn’t want the girl to overhear. “I’m afraid Harry tells us he does not care for Evangeline.”

Evangeline heard very clearly, just as she was intended to, but she managed not to cry until they were at home. Mrs. Havershell had a complicated phone call with the lawn service, which resulted in a dubious young employee in the company’s crisp navy uniform arriving the next day to create three raised beds in the back garden, several young plants and two bags of mulch.

That afternoon, Evangeline and Mrs. Havershell found that planting was more complex than one might think. Mrs. Havershell retreated to the kitchen for a glass of water while Evangeline scowled at the results of the past half hour and began to rethink the pleasure of chores.

“You need to dig a deeper hole,” said Harry from across the fence. “And when you take the plant from the pot, squish the roots around some until they aren’t pot-shaped anymore.”

It was sensible advice, but Evangeline hated Harry more than ever, so she picked up an empty pot and chucked it at him. She was several feet away, and the pot was flimsy plastic, so it fell short of its mark and harmlessly hit the fence instead.

Harry’s eyes were very wide and, Evangeline saw, very green. A dark red scar was visible where sweat had slicked back half his fringe.

“Go away,” she shouted. “I don’t care for you either.”

“What?” Harry was aghast. No one but the Dursleys had ever paid enough attention to him to yell before.

“I heard what your mum said,” Evangeline said, stepping closer to more accurately throw another pot. But Harry ducked and it sailed over his head. “Ugh!”

“That you don’t like me! But you don’t even know me, and I am very nice. You’re mean!”

The third pot hit its mark, and though Harry flinched, he was more surprised by what he had just heard than the glancing blow to his left arm.

“She’s my aunt,” he said. “And she was wrong. I do like you.”

Evangeline studied him closely for signs of lying, and then bit her lip. “Oh.”

They faced one another across the fence for several moments, and then Evangeline smiled. “Can we call a truths?”

“A truce?” Harry wondered.

“A truths,” Evangeline said confidently. It was what her father would ask her mother after a row, and it always worked. “So we won’t fight for now,” she added, in case he lacked her vocabulary.

“A truce,” Harry agreed. “Shall I help you with your flowers?”

It was a good thing he did, because Mrs. Havershell had forgotten the task altogether and fallen asleep in her armchair.

It was July 31st, and though Harry had never been told his birthdate and therefore didn’t realize it at the time, it was easily the best birthday he could recall.

****

Evangeline and Constance could no longer be considered guests when the summer eased toward its end, and Constance, not knowing what else to do, drove the neglected BMW to the local school to enroll Evangeline in Reception.

Due to the curious mechanisms that are often mislabeled coincidence, Constance wound up in line behind Petunia Dursley. They smiled tightly at one another. Somehow, despite Evangeline and Harry playing together in Mrs. Havershell’s back garden on a regular basis, Constance and Petunia had avoided one another since Evangeline’s unfortunate rejection of Dudley’s friendship at their first and only meeting. It was left to Mrs. Havershell to negotiate the terms of Evangeline’s contact with Harry when the need arose, including whether he was allowed lemonade (no) biscuits (no) or other sweets (no), and whether he could have lunch with Evangeline and Mrs. Havershell when their play outlasted the mornings (no; Harry had “too many dietary restrictions to mention”).

Had Constance not dedicated herself to her private sorrows, and had Mrs. Havershell not the hurdle of her ever-worsening confusion, they might have begun to worry about Harry. Instead, Constance just felt a foggy disappointment when she realized she would have to make small talk with Petunia Dursley for five minutes, and didn’t think very much about Harry at all.

Not until it was almost their turn in line, and then she turned toward Petunia abruptly, breaking a silence that had lasted for eleven awkward seconds since Petunia had finished a vague anecdote about Dudley’s school supplies.

“I’ve been meaning to come by and ask you,” she began, and Petunia became still and cautious. “Evangeline’s father is taking her to the seaside, and he’s asked if she might bring a friend.” She attempted a commiserating smile, but failed, managing only an anguished kind of grimace. “Fathers, you know. Can’t entertain a child her age on their own. Need a playmate.”

This was certainly accurate when it came to Vernon, so Petunia caught herself nodding, and then froze again. She could not agree, but excuses were escaping her.

“Harry is…quite delicate,” she began, then trailed off.

Oblivious to Petunia’s distress, Constance looked at her in surprise. “Is that so? He is outdoors so much. Quite strong, a wiry little thing, and with his lovely tan.” Not like Dudley, a boy so decidedly indoorsy Constance hadn’t had a glimpse of him since that day in her mother’s house.

“Yes,” Petunia said shortly.

Constance, not sure what that word meant in this context, continued to watch, puzzled, while Petunia’s mouth opened and closed a few times.

“Yes,” Petunia said again, a furrow between her brows.

“Fabulous,” Constance decided. “They go on the weekend, then. Saturday, I think it is.”

“We have plans,” Petunia blurted at last. “So very sorry. It’s, um, an ill relative.”

Constance’s face fell, which was an achievement, since it hadn’t registered more than a half degree of happiness. She was disappointed, however, for Evangeline. And a bit for herself, as well, since causing Evangeline disappointment was one of her central nightmares.

“Oh, well,” she managed at length. “I hope it’s not too serious an illness.”

“Well, we only just heard,” Petunia said, reassembling her composure swiftly. “Very sudden.”

“So very sorry,” Constance added, and then it was Petunia Dursley’s turn to enroll, and they said no more to one another.

****

Evangeline did not take the news well. It occurred to Constance, as her daughter’s eyes flashed and her voice deepened in disapproval, that Evangeline was a rather spoiled child, which was not ideal.

The realization making her impatient, Constance interrupted whatever remark Evangeline had been in the middle of. “That’s enough,” firmly. “The world does not revolve around you.”

“I don’t even know what that means,” Evangeline hissed.

Constance attempted to clarify, but as she rather thoughtlessly began with an explanation of the gravitational pull of the sun and the nature of planetary orbits, any opportunity for Evangeline’s character development was missed. However, Evangeline, helplessly seduced by the scientific nature of the topic, was drawn out of her bad mood.

“All right then, mom,” she relented, after quizzing Constance for five minutes on the orientation of the nine planets, quickly realizing that Constance could answer no questions about their relative mass, composition or other attributes. “It’s a truths.”

“Um, what?”

“A truths,” Evangeline repeated. “We don’t have to fight any more.”

Instead of correcting her, Constance was startled into a short, sad laugh. She wiped the small tear that escaped her right eye and smiled determinedly at her little girl. “A truths,” she agreed. “What a lovely word.”

****

Harry, whose previous friends were either animal or imaginary, was often overwhelmed by vivacious Evangeline, who assumed that everyone was interested in everything she said, and also had a habit of looking at him sternly and demanding information. Harry, without thinking, would blurt out an obedient reply.

This interplay was how she found out about the cupboard.

It was the evening before their first day of Reception, and they were lying on their backs on the patio. As people are with dogs they do not particularly like, the Dursleys had a summer habit of turning Harry out into the yard and rather forgetting he was there, preoccupied with a takeaway dinner and a film on the telly, they had gone, yawning, to bed just after sunset. Vernon checked the lock on Harry’s cabinet by habit but it did not occur to him that the boy wasn’t within. Petunia, seeing him, assumed he had called Harry in from outdoors.

Not that she would worry one way or another, if it weren’t for those new neighbors, whom she knew to be watching.

Harry did not mind being forgotten. He had slept in the garden many times, and it was only uncomfortable on cold evenings. This late summer kiss of coolness was as pleasant as a clean sheet, he knew from experience.

Evangeline was only allowed to be up late because it was summer, and she knew bedtimes would be enforced starting tomorrow, when summer was over and she would go to Reception. Reception was something she was quite excited for. When she’d complained that there was nothing to challenge her in nursery school, her parents had adopted a familiar refrain: oh, just wait until Reception. That’s _real_ school.

No challenges awaited Evangeline there, either; at least not of the academic variety. But more about that later.

“I have a pink backpack,” Evangeline told Harry brightly. “It has all my supplies inside. What color is your backpack?”

Harry thought of the backpack left from Dudley’s nursery school days, where Harry hadn’t been permitted to attend, which he had carefully emptied and repacked with the notebooks, pencils and crayons included on the mandatory school supply list.

“Black,” said Harry. Then, thinking of the worn places, he frowned. “Or maybe a bit grey. Black and grey,” he amended.

Evangeline’s nose wrinkled. Black was hardly even a color, she thought, and then she remembered that black was actually the presence of _all_ colors, which her nursery school teacher had told her once. Perhaps it was the superior choice, all things considered, she decided. Her pink backpack seemed terribly unsophisticated by comparison.

“Do you know anything about the stars?” Evangeline asked, recalling her mother’s description of the planets. As it was with most interesting topics, no single grown up seemed to know enough. Evangeline couldn’t believe no one had ever brought it up before. “I don’t but I’m going to learn. I think it’s going to be the first thing I learn in Reception.” Evangeline had envisioned Reception, the promised antithesis of nursery school, to be a sort of on-demand learning experience, with long rows of people her father called _academics_ , which she knew by the way he said it he didn’t like, and which sounded quite wonderful to her. A whole job that was just _knowing things_.

“I heard my aunt tell Dudley that the first thing we’ll learn is our letters,” Harry said carefully, not wanting Evangeline to set herself up for disappointment, but also not wanting to be associated with a message that distressed her.

Evangeline was sure Harry didn’t know what he was talking about. She saw movement beyond the glass doors and glanced over to find her grandmother, who had been watching the two children the entire time, hold up five fingers near the glass.

“I have to go to bed in five minutes,” she said. “You’re so lucky that you don’t have a bedtime.”

Harry almost corrected her, since his Aunt Petunia made a point of securing the cupboard each evening by seven, but then he thought of his cot. “I guess I don’t.” Hesitantly: “What do you do at bedtime?”

Evangeline rolled over on her side to look at him quizzically. “At bedtime, you brush your teeth and your hair,” she eyed Harry’s head skeptically, wondering if he had been skipping this step, “and then you put on pajamas, and then you choose a song or a story. And then you get tucked in and then you ask for a glass of water and then it’s lights out.”

She spoke as though there was one way bedtime worked in the universe which was, she realized, probably not quite right. Her mother had said “the world doesn’t revolve around you” and Evangeline thought she might, just might, understand the point Constance had been trying to make. It troubled her, so she scooted closer to Harry.

“I always choose a book,” she said. Usually he dutifully supplied a response if she paused, even if she hadn’t asked a question. As Harry had learned his manners by observation and not with practice, that was exactly the case. Sensing it was his turn to talk, and not knowing what to say without saying too much, Harry grew uncomfortable.

He had not decided to keep the way he was not like other children a secret. He had never been faced with the dilemma of telling-or-not-telling before. Other than the occasional passing remark from a kind (or annoyed) stranger on the occasion it was impossible for the Dursleys not to take him out with them, he had very little non-Dursley interaction in his young life. At the same time, he was very conscious of the fact that Evangeline was assuming things about him, including the incredible notion that his aunt and uncle treated him and Dudley alike.

And he felt he needed to protect that secret, the secret of his strangeness. It was an instinct he was too young to understand or challenge.

“I like books,” he said.

Evangeline smiled, satisfied. “I like songs, too, but not at bed. Does your aunt have a pretty voice?”

“Um,” said Harry.

“Which room is yours? Did you know that sometimes your cousin sits in his room and looks into my window? I don’t like him.”

Harry’s heart was hammering, but he still couldn’t help a smile. It was a forbidden, thrilling feeling, to hear that someone didn’t like Dudley. Especially someone like Evangeline, whose opinions seemed very reliable and important, even though she was only little, like Harry.

“I don’t have a room,” Harry said without thinking. He blushed, but couldn’t regret it. It felt wrong to lie to Evangeline.

Evangeline was looking at him in a blank way, as though he had told her the Earth was flat, or that on the first day of primary school they would be in a class of sixteen with a single weary teacher to educate them, and said teacher would not know the components of Saturn’s rings or a single theory of star formation.

“But then where do you sleep?” She remembered a nursery school classmate named Leonard who slept with his two mothers, which sounded very sweaty and crowded to Evangeline, but perhaps other people would like it. “Do you all share a very big bed?” She had thoughts of a playdate spent jumping on such a large bed, and was intrigued.

“No,” said Harry. He was looking at her desperately, as though he could will her to retract her question, but of course Evangeline was wholly without a point of reference and could not put him at ease.

“Then where?” she insisted. So Harry had to say.

“In the cupboard.”

Harry had often thought of the cupboard as _his_ , in the way persons will take ownership of a hardship, and seek the silver lining. It was a place that was so small and unpleasant even his cousin, who wanted to possess everything, didn’t take it. It was just Harry’s, and in that way, it was his favorite place in the entire Dursley house.

Mrs. Havershell opened the doors. “It’s bedtime now, my dears,” she said. “Harry, your aunt will wonder where you are.”

Harry smiled, but he did not say anything. He did not want to lie to Evangeline’s grandmother, either. And Evangeline, certain there was something she was not understanding, was for once mute while her grandmother urged her away.

****

Evangeline intended to locate Harry immediately when they arrived at her new school the next morning, but he wasn’t there. She saw his aunt and uncle and cousin getting out of their car, which was very shiny because his uncle polished it twice a week, but Harry was not with them.

Constance was telling Evangeline not to be nervous, but Evangeline hadn’t been listening, so she tugged on her mother’s hand until Constance paused and looked down.

“Where’s Harry?” Evangeline asked, pointing to the Dursleys to indicate where he _wasn’t_. Constance frowned.

“Perhaps he’s ill.”

Harry was not ill, but rather, asleep on the rear stoop. Petunia, having unlocked the cupboard that morning when she awoke, checked it furiously midway through preparing breakfast, since it was Harry’s task to help her with all the preparations of which he was able. Which was most of them, but Petunia felt the need to keep an eye on him while having coffee at the table.

She threw open the cupboard door to wake the lazy child, and found the cupboard empty.

In the years since Lily’s death and the resulting reassignment of Harry’s care, Petunia had learned more than she had ever hoped to know about both her husband Vernon, and herself. The lesson that resonated most was that it was better if Vernon wasn’t angry, but when it couldn’t be helped, it was better if it was directed at Harry than at Petunia or Dudley.

There was a chance that Harry’s absence from the cupboard could be blamed upon Petunia, and it was not a risk she was willing to take.

She closed the cupboard with this thought in mind, and when Vernon appeared at the top of the stairs a few minutes later and shouted that he couldn’t smell any bacon, she told him that Harry was very sick and likely contagious.

“Urgh,” complained Vernon. “Be sure and lock him in, then. We don’t want him contaminating the rest of the house.”

After Dudley was safely installed at school, Vernon dropped Petunia back at the house and drove on to work, dabbing at his eyes against the emotional tide of having raised Dudley into a child enrolled in primary school. Petunia, safely alone, began to look for Harry. Because he had been forgotten outside before, the rear stoop was the second place she checked, after the sheltered spot beneath the boughs of hydrangeas in the side yard.

Asleep like this, Harry looked nothing at all like his mother, which made Petunia’s emotions simpler in some ways and more complicated than others as she roughly nudged him with her toe.

“Wake up now,” she said shortly. When he rolled over and blinked up at her, she sniffed and looked away. “As you were so foolish, and slept outdoors like a dog, you have missed your first day of Reception. But since you’re here, there are dishes in the kitchen.”

Harry, without complaint or surprise, quickly got to his feet and went inside, but of course only after Petunia unlocked the door.

At the class Harry was meant to be attending, Evangeline was at least distracted enough by worrying about him that it tempered her disgust when the first lesson was, in fact, their letters.


	3. Notes

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I've decided to set this project aside permanently. I am posting portions of my draft of Chapter 3 and Chapter 6 as well as some fill-in-the-blank notes for anyone who's interested. Thanks for reading!

# Chapter Three: Jason Abbott

In which a series of coincidences lead to kept secrets

 

A few weeks into year one, after their teacher made them memorize a “Classroom Charter” with the rules she held up as the law of the land, Harry and Evangeline agreed to draft their own version.

Evangeline brought out a spiral-bound sketchbook and crayons with great ceremony and arranged them on the woven rug in the middle of her bedroom. Harry watched her write the title. She referred to a sheet of scratch paper her grandmother had given her with a few key words already spelled out.

 

“I’ll go first,” Evangeline said. She exchanged the black crayon for a blue one, wrote the number “1,” and then beside it, “Stand up for eech uther.” Her grandmother had written how to spell “stand,” which was tricky, but the others she had been able to figure out. She handed the crayon to Harry.

“2. Talk dayly,” he wrote.

“3. Sit together,” Evangeline wrote, checking her grandmother’s note again.

Harry took the blue crayon when Evangeline handled it over and looked down at it, rotating it between his fingertips slowly. “I need to ask your grandmother about some words,” he said, and snatched up the scratch paper and left the room.

While she waited for him to get back, Evangeline used the black crayon to make two steady lines at the bottom of the page where she and Harry could sign their names.

Harry reappeared with the blue crayon and her grandmother’s notes, and he bent over the charter and wrote out the whole phrase just as her grandmother had:

“4. Don’t tell secrets.”

Recognizing the sanctity of the document, it was two years before Evangline begged Harry to let her break the fourth rule of their charter. After they agreed, Harry had told Evangeline some things she had already been close to knowing, and looked at her uncomfortably when she cried.

“I don’t want to talk about this, ever,” he said firmly. And they hadn’t.

But when Harry walked out of number four to Evangeline’s mother’s car, and his arm was close to his body and at a slightly wrong angle, Evangeline felt like she couldn’t breathe.

She had the same feeling all day long, until finally someone grown up noticed what was going on and made Harry go to the nurse, and then Harry was gone and Evangeline was alone with the feeling until just after dark when she snuck out to meet him in the garden as they did every night.

“Harry,” she managed in a croak. She hadn’t spoken all day, and her voice felt strange and noisy in her head. She couldn’t stop looking at the sling and the cast. He avoided her eye.

“Uncle Vernon is pretty angry about the hospital bill,” he said. “Says I’m being a real ‘nancy boy’ about it, and it would have healed on its own.”

“What happened?”

Harry looked at her then, his eyes intense and on the edge of betrayed. But Evangeline couldn’t keep quiet. “ _Harry_.”

He went back in Number 4 without saying anything else, which was, of course, his answer to what went unsaid. _Harry, please let’s tell someone_.

The very next day, when Evangeline was fit to burst with the terrible urgency of the secret she had sworn – in writing, in blood-red crayon – never to tell, Jason Abbott was on the news.

He was an ordinary-looking boy. A bit thin, perhaps. His picture flashed on the screen while the anchor spoke sadly about the tragedy of his passing in a foster home where he was living after his parents were charged with neglect.

Evangeline was at the breakfast table, where her grandmother kept a small television for watching the morning news and weather. Miss Havershell sipped her coffee and made a pained sound. She reached out and patted Evangeline’s hand.

“What a sad story. But you’re here with the people who love you, aren’t you, Eva?”

Evangeline stared at her. “Sad story”; what a tremendous understatement.

Seeing her look, her grandmother winced and set down her coffee, leaning forward to stroke Evangeline’s cheeks. “I do feel terribly bad for the boy. Taken out of a bad situation and put somewhere worse--what a tragedy.”

That was how a dead boy who neither Evangeline nor Harry ever met kept the sanctity of the Charter for the next two years.

# Chapter Four: Leavetaking

POV Harry, Eva's mother leaves. Eva is evaluated for autism.

# Chapter Five: Parliament

(Is it still a parliament of owls when the owls are magic?)

POV Harry, the owls bring Harry's Hogwarts letters.

# Chapter Six: Strange Visitors

Evangeline clung to his hand. “But Harry doesn’t know anything about magic!”

“He’ll have to learn,” said the girl with all of the hair, and the tall ginger boy nodded solemnly.

Evangeline thought of how hard she had to work to teach Harry something as simple as calculus and wanted to cry. She loved Harry, of course, more than anything, but if they thought he was going to master a difficult topic in a couple of afternoons or something…

Harry, characteristically calm despite the surrounding chaos, squeezed Evangeline’s hand and spoke levelly. “I’m not going,” he said.

The girl with the hair, the tall ginger, and Evangeline all looked at Harry in shock.

“I did get the letter when I was eleven,” he explained. “I declined. And when Professor McGonarue – “

“McGonagall,” the girl and the boy corrected in perfect chorus, still staring at him, unblinking.

“- when Professor McGonagall came to convince me, I told her, also, that I did not want to go. And they told me that they couldn’t force me, so I expect you lot can’t either.”

Evangeline felt gooseflesh, or pins prickling, or some combination thereof, across every inch of her skin. Harry turned to her, his expression uncertain, as though he knew she was torn between being deeply hurt and deeply grateful, but couldn’t choose the dominant feeling, and so he couldn’t know whether he should brace himself for a hug or a punch.

“You wouldn’t have believed me,” Harry said slowly, “And you would have wanted to believe me so badly, that I thought it would hurt you, if I said anything.”

Evangeline put her arms around him slowly, one around his waist and one around his neck. Harry made one of his small, surprised sounds, as though still, after all of these years, her affection was unexpected. Heedless of their audience, Evangeline laid her cheek against his shoulder and inhaled the smell of him, slightly bitter with sweat but warm and clean beneath, distinctly and un-name-ably _Harry_.

The calculation was working itself out. She was helpless against it. There could be no sentiment clouding the outcome when the conclusion was this clear.

“You have to go,” she said, almost too quietly to be heard, even when her face was this close to his ear. But his hands, which had settled between her shoulderblades and on her lower back, respectively, grasped the fabric of her shirt gently for a moment, and she knew he had.

“I don’t…” he started, and then he pulled away from her, as though it was too difficult to speak when she held him. Evangeline folded her arms over her stomach, looking at him through her eyelashes, finding his face full of color, his eyes damp and bright. “I’m not going anywhere,” he settled for at last.

“Why not?” demanded the girl. “We all saw what it’s like for you here, with these… _people_!”

Evangeline’s mind grew busy with images of the Dursleys, all the years she had known Harry. The looks and threats, the bruises and reset bones, the litany of accounts of accidents that she had always known to be lies, and which Harry knew she had known to be lies. That furiously whispered conversation after what happened to Jason Abbott in third grade. A horrible, thick guilt filled her, to know that but for her, he could have escaped to a literal fairy tale at any time.

“It will be years before you have to face him,” the tall ginger said. “Plenty of time to learn. And if you never learn at all…well, he will find you.” He looked at Evangeline with deliberate significance. “Both of you.”

At that, Harry paled again. He looked at Evangeline, a little wildly. “I would never let Eva get hurt.”

“How could you possibly stop him?” snapped the girl. “It’s like trying to duel with a…a bow and arrow, against a machine gun.”

“More like a wooden spoon against a machine gun,” the tall ginger said wryly, and earned a swift look of disbelief from the girl. “What?” he hissed. “I know about Muggle things.”


End file.
